Become An Unforgettable Public Speaker with Mike Ganino, Storytelling & Public Speaking Coach

To anyone who's ever given a talk or thinking about giving a talk, when you get so stuck in having to deliver this exact content, like said, in an exact way, you don't feel it in your body.

Yeah.

And if you don't feel it in your body, they do not feel it in their body.

We get married to the words. We get stuck trying to get it all right. If we remember all the words and forget the meaning, we've lost it. Foreign.

Welcome back to the earn your happy podcast. I want to make your life easier. I literally created a product for you that if you only did one good thing for yourself a day for your beauty routine and your wellness routine, that you can rest easy knowing that you did great things for yourself and put incredible things into your body. And when I was creating my product that I'm talking about Glossy, which is a daily beauty supplement for skin and gut, because beauty starts from within. Truly, what you eat comes through in your skin and in your appearance and how you're feeling. And when we created Glossy, I wanted to make one thing. I wanted to make your beauty routine easier and I wanted to make your wellness routine easier without having to swallow all of the pills. Because I am a busy entrepreneur and even though fitness used to be my career, in my life, once I started my multiple businesses at once, I was like, oh hell no, I do not have the time for that yet. I knew I needed to be doing it. So this is meant to simplify your beauty and wellness routine and I want to give you 25% off so you can go to get glocy G E T G l o c I.com and use code happy for 25% off. And truly, I want you to tell me how you feel. In 30 days. We're having so many people come back and say that they notice such a difference in their gut, in their bloating, in their skin. And that's what it's all about, you guys, is I want to improve the way that you feel while also of course, giving you that glowing appearance that we all want. And beauty comes from within. So you got to take care of your gut in order for it to show in your skin. So today on the episode, I have the incredible Mike Gannino. He's an actor turned master storyteller and public speaking coach. He is the best selling author of Make a Scene which is his new incredible book. And speaking on stage is so much more than the words you write in your speech. That's what he is all about. Speaking on stage is so Much more than what you say. For any speakers out there wanting to sharpen your skills, anyone thinking about public speaking, podcasters, and anyone wanting to master storytelling in an impactful way, which is basically everyone out there and everyone listening, because storytelling is everything. If you want to, you know, grow your business, if you're selling a product, if you're sharing your story. This episode is a masterclass on public speaking, and Mike is so entertaining. The way that he teaches. He talks about how, even more importantly than saying the perfect words, it's about the connection. This episode is full of practical tips to draw in your audience and make them fall in love with you. He shares about the physicality of speaking, from how you're moving your body and getting out of your head and into your body, fully representing and presenting where your feet are so that you have the ability to connect and make an impact. We talk about using dynamics of speaking, faster, slower tonality, louder and softer, to really pull people into your stories. And I'm telling you, just that part alone in the podcast for me was huge, because I'm a podcaster, I'm a storyteller. I know that the better that I can get at speaking, the more that it converts, the more that I connect and the more that I grow my business and feel really connected to my audience. So Mike breaks down his five stage languages. It's like the love languages, but for stage. And all of this, at its core, is about communication, so you can use this framework in so many different areas of your life to make you more interesting, your business more interesting, and everything just more engaging when you talk. He also shares why the advice of show don't tell could be leading you astray when it comes to speaking on stage, online, or in person. So I know you're going to be a better communicator directly after this episode because these tips are so tangible, you can use them immediately. So let's get started. Mike, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

I'm so excited. This any time that someone can spend with you is a perfect time. So.

Well, we captured that on tape, so that's good.

Yeah. Yes.

I was just thinking about. I was kind of thinking of our intro of what I wanted to say on the ride over, and I'm like, I absolutely need to share with people that the way that you and I met and how we got to spend some time together after being introduced through our mutual friend Aaron King. And Aaron had let me know that she was going to be meeting later that day. I'd Gone on a walk with Aaron. She said, I'm going to be meeting later in the afternoon with my speaking coach, who's like, so amazing. She just, like, raved about you. And at this time, I just so happened to have been booked for a really big stage that was a little bit different audience than what I'm used to with really big name speakers. So I was feeling real intimidated, and I didn't want to just kind of go into, like, my talks like I normally do. I wanted to, like, do better. I wanted to step it up. I wanted to really, like, share and reach people. And Erin heard that, and she's like, maybe you should just pop down to montage, because I'm going to be meeting with Mike. And I was like, mike sounds great. If, like, great, I'll go and listen and learn or whatever. I'm like, are you sure this is not weird? Like, that was a very big offer for her to come and get to meet this person who's impacted her so much with her speaking and her ability to be such a phenomenal speaker. And she really gave so much credit to you. And so I got to drive down to Montage, which, if you guys don't know, is this beautiful hotel on the ocean. It's actually my, like, favorite. One of my favorite properties in the world. And we got to and hang out and have some cocktails, and by the end of the night, we were all singing Little mermaid together in the lobby of the montage, which was not what.

Was happening in the lobby of the Montage. It was just like the piano bar guy was doing some, you know, he did little medleys, and he started a Disney one. And we said, oh, this was for us. Yeah, we love little Mermaid singing full out, full out Little Mermaid.

So that was probably one of my favorite first meetings I've ever had in my entire life. And I was like, wow, you have this incredible ability to pull things out of people as well. Because when on my drive home, I was like, I have a little bit of a vulnerability hangover because I told him more things than I think I've ever told anyone in the first meeting. Yeah, But I think that that says so much about what your art is and what you're able to do, because I was so myself around you immediately. And I think that you create that for people when they speak on stage is like, you can see who they really are and then the disconnect from them on stage, and it's like really pulling that personality through. And I will say that that is like, that Is a frickin Death Valley hero's journey. Like, going from that to, you know, being better on stage. And I got to work with you.

Yeah.

So I've gotten to actually work with you on that talk afterward, spent the day with you, which was really incredible. And that was. That was extremely transformational for me. Like, one of the most transformational days. It was really. It was hard, it was amazing. It was like, yeah, you just really know how to highlight people's brilliance, make them feel good, make them feel comfortable, while also making them feel horribly uncomfortable.

Yeah. It's so funny how often my friend Laura Gasser Otting wrote a book, Wonderhell. And in there she introduces this chapter where she went to this big conference, a big speaking conference that I was part of. And there was an improv class. And she said, oh, no, I don't want to go to that. But you didn't get to choose where you went. You had to go like, it was like a, you're going to this room. And then this room. Everyone cycled through.

Got it.

So she walked in and she was like, oh, the improv class. Oh, there's 300 people. Perfect. I'll just sit in the back of the room. And immediately it was me teaching. And I said, everyone up. We're all gonna get up here. Cause it was a huge auditorium. And she said in that moment, she looked at me and was like, I hate this person. Now she's one of my best friends, closest friends. But she was like, oh, I hate this person because they're gonna make me so uncomfortable. He's probably gonna make me cluck like a chicken immediately. There's something about chickens in there. And it's really, I think for me, like, one of the saddest things to me is when someone can never access that version of them in front of other people. And so when I'm watching someone on stage or someone that I'm directing, someone that wants to. And a lot of times people don't even know what it is. They want to. They just know, like, something isn't happening. For me when I get on stage or when I get, you know, in front of a group of people or even go on video.

Totally.

And for me, what I see immediately is what is the stuff that's blocking that from happening and how can we just remove some of it? And it's usually not about, like all the don'ts, the don't say ums and the don't move this way. It's about, why are you doing what you're Doing. And is any of it defensive, which is immediately going to keep you from connecting with an audience, because you're not you specifically, but you're trying to put up a wall for sure, because you want to stay safe. Well, that wall then translates to you never actually feeling what it feels like in front of a group of people to be just totally open and available. And for me, when someone can, like, tap into that, that's what gets me, like. Like, super excited. So, indeed, I like to go fast. You know, when I meet someone, it's like, hey, so if we're gonna do this, let's. Let's do it. Let's just jump right in, get naked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go. Let's go.

All right. So you. You kind of have a sweet spot with working with people who maybe not in the beginner phase anymore. You like more of people who kind of have a general idea of where they're going, what they're talking about. Tell me how that all started with what you're doing now.

I think for me, I was never super interested in convincing someone they needed to be a public speaker that, like, you should be public speaking, because I think you don't have to. There's a million ways to grow your business. There's a million ways to have an impact. You could be a writer. You could be a. You know, I don't know. You could be an actuarial scientist. You don't have. I don't know what they do, but I know that's a job. You don't have to be a speaker. So if it's something that is, like, you need convincing to do, it's okay. That's not for me to do.

Yeah, like, that's not the place that you're gonna thrive.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's just not. And for me, it wasn't something I wanted to spend time at. And what happened a lot was that kind of content that you need to produce for those kinds of speakers was all very beginning content.

Right.

How to deal with your nerves. I'm not super interested in how to deal with your nerves. I'm interested in how do we get you to, like, glow all the way up on stage? How do we get the version of you that is so dynamic, so magnetic that everyone's gonna fall in love with you? How do we find her? And I'm not super interested in helping with the nerves, because what helps with the nerves, by the way, is getting up there and owning it and then go away real quick when you get up there, and you're like, oh, okay. They like this. They're laughing. They're with me. The nerves go away fast. But for me, I was always really interested in people that wanted to go for greatness and not people that wanted to get through their next speech, that wanted to just, like, not pass out on stage, but people that said, gosh, there's something in my gut. There's some little thing that's spinning, and I need access to it. And the good thing has been that those people are. I mean, there's a range. Yeah. Like, some of the top. Top speakers in the world that I get to work with still have that, where they say, oh, gosh, there's something. There's just something I'm not getting to. And I think people would probably be surprised, even for you, because you're so before me, before we ever worked together. You're amazing and talented and, like, magnificent on stage. When I watched video of you to prep for our time, and I think people would say, why is she working on that? Look at her. She's doing her thing all the time. And it's that thing in your gut that says, there's more. There's a little fire that, like, I want to throw some kindling on there. I love those people. Love those people.

Well, thank you for that. I still don't feel that way, but. But that's probably a good thing. So you wrote a book.

I did.

I want to know that journey, because whenever I get anyone who wrote a book, it's like, you think you're starting for one reason. So let's talk about that. Like, oh, I'm writing it because I always get asked this, or I want to help these people. And then you become a completely different in the process. So let's first start with why did you first set out to write it?

Initially, it was, oh, I want to. I want to just put down the things that I'm saying, the things that I was coaching people on. I want to have a book for that. I want all the things that I teach and say. I want it to be codified, like.

How to be on stage, everything that we just chatted about.

Yeah. How to. How to be in front of other people, how to tell stories, how to. How movement should work on stage, how slides should look on stage. So initially, it started out with that, and then, you know, three years into the journey, I wrote a whole book. I have, like, three different books that I wrote that are not the one that you have. Yeah, I wrote a whole book about how which someday maybe it'll come out how what we've been through in our life impacts how we show up. And there's a little bit of that in make a scene.

Yeah.

Of the things we've experienced, of course it's going to limit how we think we can sound, for sure. Of course it's going to limit how we think we can move. If people made fun of us, if we were always scared to be a certain way, of course it's going to impact us on stage. So there's a little bit of that in there. But I wrote a whole book on, like, trauma, bullying, all these ideas and how those limit us and how we can kind of like take that back. So that book's out there. Then I wrote a whole book that was like celebrity themed. Every chapter was like, how to do this, like JLo or how to move. Like this.

That's fun.

But I got real scared of, like, what if a celebrity does something bad? And now I wrote a book about them. So that book got shelved.

Yeah, that's a real thing.

That's a real thing. I got so scared of, like, oh, my gosh, what if I have a chapter about somebody with no names? Yeah. I didn't want to glorify anyone that was hurting someone.

Exactly.

Let me get rid of that. And then the version that finally came to be, I think was the right version. And it's all about, you know, I like to sit in the audience seat and watch a speaker.

Yep.

A lot of public speaking coaches are very worried about, what are you doing? Like, how do you move your hands and how do you do this? What are the actions of the speaker? How do we make you feel safe or comfortable or something like that? What I'm really interested in is if I'm sitting in the audience's seat, what am I experiencing? Which is what a director does. And I'm far more interested in. Again, if someone needs. I'm nervous. I'm that great. There's a lot of people to help with that. I'm interested in the people that are getting on stage and saying, I want to knock this out of the park. I want this to be like something I've never done before. Great. Let me sit in the, in the audience's seat and read what's going on and tell you all the little choices you can make. Because when we see someone, I get texts all the time, Laurie. Oh, I'm at this event and so. And so, oh, gosh, they need you. I get that kind of thing. My response always Is, oh, I bet you they did a whole bunch of things right. And they probably just didn't know the choices they could make on the other things. That's how I view it. Like, it's not that someone is awful on stage, or they don't know that they shouldn't pace, or they don't know they shouldn't, like, yell the whole time or something like that. It's that they didn't know there was another choice they could make.

Yeah.

This book, Make a Scene became about. Let me write about all the choices we have available to us on stage so that when we're sitting or when we're standing in front of an audience, we can pull different levers to get what we want done. And so that became really fun to write about. It became very torturous to write about for a long time because there's so many.

As you're talking, I'm going down my own rabbit hole of things that I learned with you when I was in that room working with. Because there are so many choices that it's connected to, so many things that this book could go on and on and on and on and on. Like, you could have 12, 24 volumes of, like. Of what choices that you could make. So as you're going through this book writing process, what is happening to you? What are you feeling? What are your blocks? And who are you on the other side?

For me, I had a lot of blocks around not being able to write how I wanted to write. Like.

And how did you want to write?

For me, I wanted it to feel like this is a how to book mixed with a memoir mixed with a inspirational thing. And sometimes I felt like this is really overreaching. What the heck are you talking about? You're talking about watching ET As a little boy and your parents got divorced and you felt like E.T. and you felt like the little boy Elliot in the movie. What are you doing? Does anyone want this?

You're like, but it's attached. It's so tied.

It was so funny because there was a moment with this ET Story specifically. It is in the book. I was like, oh. I'd gotten feedback from one per. And you know this feedback with books. One person says, oh, this doesn't go here. Another person says, don't you dare remove it.

Right, Exactly.

You're like, well, thanks.

This really helped everybody.

Yeah, I really got some clarity from this conversation.

Exactly.

So there was a. This ET Story specifically. And I was like, maybe I'm. Maybe I don't need to put as much My journey in here. And I was in the airport. I was coming back from Paris. I'm in the airport. It's2024. Okay. ET is a long time ago. This movie. I'm in the airport. I'm in the. You know, like, sometimes when you're going through customs, that the walkway is, like, four levels up on a. You know, you're doing, like, a little thing.

Totally.

I look back as I'm literally thinking I'm email. I'm texting with Aaron King and my husband about this. I don't know. This way, that way. I got to decide right now. It's almost time to turn this in. A woman walks on with an ET backpack.

Yeah. I mean, ET is like, 1932.

You know, it was like, there is no reason this woman has an ET Backpack on except to tell me to pour more of my truth into this.

Exactly. Was she an adult woman?

Adult woman, yeah.

That's your sign.

And it was, like, one of those really cute. It wasn't, like, a backpack with ET on it. It was ET Stuffed. You know, the ones that look like animals.

Next level.

Yeah. And I was like, literally got it.

You're like, ET Is going in here.

In a text with Aaron King.

That's.

And the ET Backpack walked by, and I was like, well, well, that's the answer. This is a sign. And, you know, we're going with it. And so for me, that moment pushed me to say, no, keep writing in this memoiristic style. I think also the thing I said about you a little bit ago that people looking at you would say, when does she not ever rock in that stage when she's gotten on it before? And I think people would feel similarly about me in some ways. So I wanted. I thought, well, they could read this book, and they could be like, oh, this is a guy who always knew these things. A little expert. Or I could tell the story about being in New Orleans for my first, like, big gig. Like Simon Sinek. Oh, my God. Brene Brown or there. Oh, God. I'm not on the same big stage as them, but it's my first, like, real gig. And so I was like, I could tell the story of me in New Orleans wanting to get mugged so that I didn't have to do.

Oh, God.

You know those moments where it's like, this is the thing I've been dreaming of doing, but in the moment of. I just want to get out of having to do it all the time.

Every time I think of that with people, I'm like, they have no idea that once you arrive, you're like, could I actually fall very ill? But not ill enough to kill me, but ill enough to keep me off that stage.

Yeah. Like, ill enough that they would look at me and say, ooh, don't let her.

Can't do it.

She can't get up there. So that is what I wrote. I wrote that in the book because I was like, I think that I need to be this honest with people.

Yeah, for sure.

Because it is such a thing, public speaking and storytelling and presenting ourselves to the world. It's so personal and it's so. There's a lot of stuff that we have to deal with. And so I thought, well, let me just unzip the jacket, open up and say, this is what it was like for me. And I've heard people who've quoted that New Orleans story, they've quoted the ET Story. They've quoted the part where I said I had a 15 minute speech and I had 185 slides because my insecurities told me. Right. Been there.

That is so me.

My insecurities told me so bad. Have all the slides you need because. Be ready, Mike.

Yeah.

And so it. That moment with ET in the airport allowed me to write the book I wanted to write.

I'm so glad you went that route because, you know, in. In summers when Chris and I would go up to our lake house, we do the. The route is longer, so the walk is longer. It's like a four and a half mile walk. Like, and once you're on the walk, you can't get off the walk. It's a square, like, through farmland. You're committed, so you're committed. And. And what we do on this walk is we'll listen to a lot of books out loud together. And what we've clearly noticed is when people do just a how to book and say, this is how. This is what you do. It's almost like it feels like a finger pointing. Like, do this, do this, do this. You're so disconnected that even if it's the best advice on earth that actually works, you disconnect from it. Because you don't. You need to relate it to a person and understand that they understand you in the experience.

Yes.

And you know, the way that you speak on stage, because I've gotten to see you on stage, which is absolutely amazing. Life changing, transformational. It's wonderful. It's like having a friend on stage, even if you don't know them and you just feel safe. And I know I'm going on a journey with you and it's like you're going to speak directly to a part of me that's also what I want to get to today is kind of like how do you get people to that place when they start sharing stories of letting go? Because the level that I watch you on stage, that you must have to like really let go.

Yeah.

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Really comes down, I think, to feeling completely safe yourself in yourself. Like knowing that regardless of what happens up there, I'm good. I got this. I don't do this for their approval. I'm not hoping they love me. I'm hoping I can be helpful. Yeah, but even that, like, there's a lot of like, I'm gonna get in trouble for this. But there's A lot of, like, I'm in service of the audience when I'm up there.

Sure.

Okay. But you still choose to do it in front of an audience on a stage. So there's some element of it that's for you.

Right.

Otherwise you would go write blogs or something.

Exactly. Behind a screen with a no name. Like, you make up a name.

There's an element there that it's not just always in service of the audience. We get something from it, too. And I think someone accepting that and saying, great, I want to be great up there. I want them to have a moment with me. And I'm not doing this to seek their approval. Because then we start making all these little adjustments of, like, do they like me? Am I good enough? And that starts to feel, I think, desperate to an audience. You can feel that when you watch someone, you think, oh, they really want us to like them. They're really trying so hard. Versus kind of freeing yourself and saying, I've got this. Whatever happens up here, I'm going to be okay. I'll know what to do. I'll know where to go. And now some of that is ahead of time. Knowing how to prepare, how to workshop, how to rehearse in a way that is supportive. So often we rehearse in a way that is restrictive. We get married to the words. We get stuck trying to get it all right. And so then we get on stage and of course we freak out with, like, am I doing it right? Am I getting it right? I always say if we remember all the words and forget the meaning, we've lost it.

Oh, my God. I know exactly what you're talking about when you say that.

Yeah.

Because I can get really stuck in. And to anyone who's ever given a talk or thinking about giving a talk, when you get so stuck in having to deliver this exact content, like said in an exact way, you don't feel it in your body.

Yeah.

And if you don't feel it in your body, they do not feel it in their body.

Yeah. And that's that moment where we're talking about, like, when you're watching someone on stage and you think, gosh, what is that? Yeah, I want some of that.

Totally.

It's someone who's not worried about am I gonna get it right? And instead is worried about, can I have a moment with these people? Can I connect with these people? And if we're worried about getting all the words right, we automatically go into a protective place of ourselves. We automatically start to close in because we say, let Me remember it all. Let me get it right. Totally. And we think if we don't get it right, I'm not going to be good enough. So now that starts to be on us. And that's where that desperation starts to feel. But watching someone on stage who. It's like, wow, you're just free. You're not trying to be someone else. You're not trying to convince me. You are just free up there. That feels, I think, like, like magic because it's so rare.

What do you think are the things that you have done or helped people with to free them?

A lot of it is realizing how much of this work is physical. We get so worried about the words.

Yeah.

Like, I'm going to write my speech, I'm going to organize my speech, I'm going to memorize my speech, I'm going to wordsmith this word and move this word here and move that word there and we forget that. Like, that's great if you're writing a book. Like, we've done that part. But when you're in front of people, that's a physical job. Your voice is physical. You're. Because it's air and it's muscles, it's contracting, it's vocal folds. It's all the stuff going through your physical body is there. And so we, we so often forget to, to check in with our body. Yeah, to. To realize we can use our body. And so we get on stage and that's where we start to get stuck and married to the word. So then we can ever be free versus understanding. I actually know how to move really naturally the rest of the time. Like if I'm in a room and I want you to know, oh, I'm, I'm. I want to get closer. We're going to get closer and have a moment. I do that. So why wouldn't you do that on stage? If I wanted you to feel like something was really important that I was saying, I would slow down my pacing and I would make the words slower and people say, oh gosh, that's really important. What are you saying right now? Must be really important. So the freeing for people comes from helping them. One, realize how much of the work is physical and two, how much of that they're already really good at because we're really natural at that. Most people in one on one conversations are really natural at using their voice in ways that are effective.

Totally.

But then we get on stage and we get presenter voice and I start to teach and we lose it. One on one conversation or A group of people, we're really effective at how to use gestures, how to use our body language, how to move in a room. And then we get on stage and we freeze and we get worried about our words. So if we can power up the physicality of it all and remember how good at that we naturally are anyway, we can start to kind of lose some of the. I must become someone on stage and start to tap back into just how we normally are.

What are some things that people can do to bring. Like, if, If. If they're a podcaster and they know they're going to go on podcasts and tell stories, maybe they're on a book tour like you are right now, or maybe they're gonna present to their team what are some things that they can start doing to focus on, like voice inflection and body movement.

The big thing. So for voice. Yeah, it's recognizing that. That one, you have all these levers you can pull. Because sometimes we don't even realize that, like, oh, I. I don't just have to always sound the same way all the time. It's like, no, you do have all these options. So for me, it's looking and saying, you know, if you've got notes for a meeting, if you're going to go on a podcast, if you're prepping a story to tell on a podcast, you know, when they ask you at the top of a lot of shows, tell us about yourself. Yeah. Then think through. Okay, how do I want to answer that? What do I want to say that there? And then to say, what would be helpful? Are there parts of it where, you know, there's these, like, five P's I'm a trainer at heart. Always these five P's of voice that.

We use, they help. They help.

They do. It's like, especially when you're writing, you're like, let me organize it all.

Exactly.

So, like, pacing. Are there places where you could speed up to make something funnier, to make it seem like if I was telling a story and I wanted to say, I'll never forget when I was going into the mail room and I was so scared, and then all of a sudden, I saw the mail falling and this lady walked in and she was running around, and I was thinking, oh, my gosh, what is she? The pacing of that, we can play with that. We can also slow things down in the pacing to say, you know, again, in that bad mailroom story.

But we like it.

It's working for us right now. It's an example. We could do something like, she. She looked at me and I never felt looked at like that ever again in my life. So it could slow down. So pacing your pitch, right, so we can play with. How high can your voice go? Like, how low can it go? Are there places when you want to say, I was feeling stuck and lost. And are there places where you want to say, he made me feel so amazing when he reached out with that flower. Like just those little pieces that when you're working on. And again, you don't have to do it for a whole hour long podcast, but if you've got a store you're going to open with, play with it, try out some different ways of being. If you're leading a meeting and you're going to start off with a customer story, a client story, an example of someone on your team who did something really amazing, then how could you just bring some life to that, a little bit with those. And then with physicality, the big thing, I think so often we get stuck, especially in video, on zoom calls, on webinars, we get really stuck is like.

Yeah, here you're ahead.

Head versus right. We're just like shoulders and a head and disembodied, like, thinking brain. Which then puts us back in that, like, only my words matter phase.

Like, get a leg in there, put a leg up. Yoga.

That would certainly be surprising. You know me, I love a little surprise, a little flare. A little flare, yes. So you could do. You can move yourself closer to your camera, like, totally set it up so you can lean in and do something like. Like, let's say that I was talking to a webinar and I was saying, you know, I don't tell this to everybody, but I'm gonna tell you guys. So come in, lean in. Come on. Yeah, you could do that. And it brings. Nobody does that. So when people do that, it's like, oh, we got a live one here. Remember Randy Jackson on American Idol? He's like, we got a live one.

Yeah.

Those little moments really allow us to just pop off the page, pop off the screen, pop off the stage in a way that we just don't think about a lot. So that's where I would start.

Oh, I love that. And even thinking of it from a podcaster perspective, because there's so many people who have podcasts now. Like, if you really listen to the really good ones, they are constantly loud, soft, slow, fast. Like, you can picture them leaning in because you can hear them getting closer to the microphone and they're telling you a story. Like it's so good. And we. Like, I'm actually hanging on your every word right now because you just did a whole piece on inflection that I'm just, like, I'm observing that I'm actually moving closer to you because you are inflecting so much that I'm inter. My brain is interested.

Yeah. So imagine someone in their car.

Yeah.

Listening and listening. They're saying, ah, yes. They're not just this person in a car alone. Especially with podcasting, it's so, so intimate. I think podcasting is so intimate.

Totally.

We're alone with people a lot in their car. We're in their ear. We're physically in their body sometimes, like, in their earbuds.

Sometimes we're in the shower. I stick this on my shower door.

Oh, I love it. Yeah. Yeah, that's intimate.

Exactly.

Like, we have these moments with. With people on podcasts that we don't have other places. And so to leverage that, to tap into that level of intimacy that we do have with people, like, what a gorgeous thing to do with your voice, you know, to be able to get people to say, gosh, I was really there in the room with them.

That is what it feels like. And I do feel like when people. When people are comfortable with inflection, like, the more that you practice it, the more comfortable you actually appear and the more comfortable they are with you. Because when you are uptight or anxious, things don't really change. Like, it's very, like, either fast or high or, you know, what a certain pace. So I think that it is. It makes people feel very comfortable and connected to you. So you have the five stage languages.

Yes.

What are these?

So I started working with. I was speaking.

Yeah.

Way back when, 2015. And one of my clients said, hey, can you. We want to hire you to come back. Oh, perfect. I repeat gig. She said, we don't want you to speak. And I thought, okay. Okay. Well, you're not the first person to say you'd pay me to shut up, so what do you want?

Right?

And she's like, everyone remembered your. Your stuff. Our team was raving about it. But. But our executive team, they aren't great. And so our team isn't trusting them. They're not believing them. They're bored. So can you help coach them for our next conference? Oh, good. And I thought, oh, cool. And at the time, you know, 2015, I was just getting started as an entrepreneur, and I was like, yes, of course. I know exactly how to do that. And then I was like, I Don't know how to help someone do. I don't know what I'm doing. You know, I was a restaurateur and I was an actor writer doing theater all along. So I. I was able to do it, but I didn't know what I was doing necessarily. Right.

You didn't, like, have that framework set yet. Okay.

So I sat down, I was like, how do I help these non actors be more engaging, more interesting? And so the very early version of these five stage languages came from. How would I help normal people pull the different levers, the places they can make choices? We were talking about choices before. What are the choices? Is there a way to organize them? And that's where the five stage languages came from. When an audience is sitting and watching you on stage, on screen, on podcast, what are the different pieces that go into what they feel? You know, when I'm thinking like a director, where can I make choices? Yeah. And so those are verbal. These are the actual things you're saying. How are you putting the story together? Where does the story start? You know me, I'm always like, push the story. Not so much intro. Get us to the room, you know, like, open the snack drawer.

Yeah.

Get us to the moment. This is a story that was so helpful and so verbal. How are we actually telling the story? How can we make it funny? What are the bits we can do? Second one is voice. So vocal. What are the five Ps? The pace, the pitch, the pause, the punch, the passion? What can you do with those? How can we play with those? Where can we weave them in here? The physical is the third stage language. What can we do with our gestures, with our body, with our physicality? There's a moment in my keynote at the end where I get down on my knee and I talk about my little baby girl being in the nicu. And I put my little finger up, I'm on my knee, and it's her little. And the picture pops up behind me. She's £2. The whole audience at this point is like, leaning in. Tears are coming. And I talk about how I told her I'd never leave her, I'd always be there for her. And then I take that. A minute later, I kneel down again. I'm in the bathroom, she's in the bathtub, and we're talking again. I tell her, poppy's leaving tomorrow to go to Insert City, that I'm in with whatever audience, to go talk to accountants in Ohio. And she said to me, why are you leaving? So that physical thing of being on my knee. That choice says something to the audience. If I had done that moment further back on stage, it's not as meaningful if I do it right on the lip, right on the edge. And so physical choices on stage is this third stage language we have.

Have.

Where do we move? How do we move? I spend a lot of time helping people not move randomly and spastically.

Yes.

There's a lot of. Like, just always when I do a video review for someone, I say, why did you walk over there? Why are you walking over to that guy? What are you doing over there?

You do voiceovers for all of us.

I know.

While we still suck, like, and then you help us.

Yes, there we go. But I think all the time, like, where are you going? Why are you going over there? Was he lonely?

This corner needed me.

Yeah, the corner looked a little. They looked a little sad. They needed some. Some love. Versus if we can take back that physicality, we stop giving away our power on stage. Because when we start to just move, we shuffle our weight. We. I call it the curtsy. A lot of times if you have heels on, you'll balance the weight. So we're. It's like we're doing the keynote. Cha Cha. You know, that's what I call it. And so what if we made our movement intentional? What could happen? You know, like coming out, having a moment. Moment where you do everything from one place, and then, boom, you move to another thing. It's like remembering I will always love you by Whitney Houston. There's the big moment where she's like, yes, like that. That's physicality, you know, and so physical is a third stage language. The fourth is visual. What are you wearing? What is that saying? Because an audience is sitting there and they're taking it all in. True. They're taking it all in. What's on the slides? You know, do you have props? Could you bring in props, you know, if you're talking about something? So what is the full visual elements that the audience is walking away with? And this big little. A little freebie one for people here is a lot of times our slides will put in, like, branded slides or branded colors.

Yeah.

But then, like, an image we have on it is, like, very sad image, but it's like bright pink because that's our brand color on the bottom. And it's like, no, this is a visual moment for the audience. So now you're like, like confusing us because it's like, here's a sad, horrible image of whatever. And then there's Like a little pink Juji Zhu. That's concerning another thing. When I was an exec producer at TEDx Cambridge, we would sometimes have people have an image up. We had one woman one time talking about incarceration. She was a philosophy professor or something. So she had an image of, like, incarcerated people. But then she moved on to talk about something else that was lighter, but the image was still.

Oh, yeah, no, we can't get off it.

Put a filler slide or something. So, I mean, we save that before the show. Yeah, but we don't think about that sometimes because we think of a lot of times people with presentations or webinars think of, like, I need this slide for this piece, and then I'll pick a new slide when I need it, versus, wait, think of the audience's experience where they're writing with you. And then the fifth stage, language after visual is emotional. It is a little bit of a cheat because like, like, it's the other ones combined. But what is the emotional journey I've taken the audience on here? How am I hacking their dopamine? How am I hacking their oxytocin? How am I hacking their serotonin? Am I getting any little cortisol stress moment in there? Am I relieving them of that? Or do I leave them in that stress, which is a bad thing to do? No standing ovation gonna come from that. So what is the emotional journey you took them on? And then how can we do that? Like, for a close, I love, like, syncopated, like the final minute, short sentences, short and fast. You are gonna be here. We are gonna do this every time you walk out the door. We are gonna. Because it starts to get the audience to get excited. Like, oh, something's happening. You want people to spring to their feet. It's not just saying some, like, mic drop thing. It's about tapping into their, like, emotional resources. Shorter sentences, choppier delivery. The sound of your voice can start to tell them, like, get excited, Something's happening. It's why, like, in movie trailers, it's always like, in a world, because it starts to make you feel like something's happening here. And so we can do that too. On stages, on podcasts, on webinars, on our social media videos.

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And for me, making sure that people had access to that so they could understand like how great they could be was really important.

Do you watch things now like viral things online or anything and you can absolutely see all of these pieces to it?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that like the beginning of the five stage languages I started developing in like 2015, it slowly became more and more and more as I developed the mic drop method, which that's part of this method, it got cleaner, tighter, you know, your work gets more organized. The more you live it, the more it's, you know, clean and. And I started doing like performance coach reviews of like Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard or these little. This is part of like a YouTube thing we're going to try to do is like like reaction videos. Yeah, totally. To like these moments and breaking it down and like literally can break it down with those five things always. Like what are the words? How do they sound? How do they move? What did we see? What did we feel like you can really break it down that way. Which I think becomes kind of fun because then it's no longer like mystified. Like, I don't know why some people are just great. No, I know why. I could tell you why. I could tell you what they're doing and it's been fun. Were you a wicked girly? This movie.

No, I didn't watch it yet. I'm going to, I'm going to. Okay, tell me, tell me all the things.

Well, I'm not gonna do a spoiler, but we've seen so much Cynthia and Ariana talking about the choices they made. And I think, you know, for the folks listening, like, start to pay attention to that of like, oh, oh, I wonder why they did it that way. I wonder why they walked over there. I wonder why she chose to do that with her voice. And it starts to become kind of fun because we can do the same things. We can, absolutely. In podcasting, video stages, presentations, whatever it is, we can start to play around and have a little bit of choice. And if you're somebody who is doing a lot of podcasting or you're doing the same kinds of presentations or webinars, that's a great time to play because it's like, oh, this old thing again. I'm doing another podcast intro.

Totally.

So since it's something you're comfortable with, use that as an opportunity to play. You know, a lot of times with, with speaking, someone will say, you know, the first time they give the talk will be like, in front of real high stakes paying people.

Yeah.

And I say, like, why don't you go down to, like, the local real estate office and say, hey, can I. Can I pop in and deliver this? Why don't you call your friends, mastermind up and say, hey, I'm working on this new keynote. Can I pop in? And I think your team would love it as a way to get some reps to find where's the joke?

For sure.

Where's the beat? If I hold it for one moment longer, is it funnier? This is the kind of craft stuff I love geeking out on, because at the end of the day, our influence in the world, our impact in the world, world, I believe, is how we communicate is dictated by how well we communicate. And so I think if we can constantly. It's like the investment that always pays back. So true. Investing in how we communicate, it always pays dividends. So if we can start to just like, every single time you're up to bat, every single time you're going on a new podcast, every single time you're doing a new webinar, pick something. Pick something to test, to play with and just constantly be adding that into your little repertoire of skills.

Yeah. And you know what I realized? Just even hearing you like it makes me more excited for all of the mundane things because you're. You're More engaged because you're thinking about what you're doing. Because these things can. I've had a podcast for eight years. It can, sometimes it can get old. And so you just gave me something really fun to focus on.

Yeah.

Like during some of my solos or even during interviews to also help connect with that other person on the other side as well.

Yeah.

And so I think all of these things are not only like gonna help re engage you, but it's gonna help re engage your people. And I love that you're like, just pick one. Just like pick one that you're gonna focus on or if you're seasoned, pick all of em and just. And see what you can do. So your book is called Make a Scene, which I like the realization of how you talk about everything. Truly you are setting a hole. You're always setting a scene.

Yeah.

Like it's not just, oh, I wanna help them be bigger on stage or, or get a point across or whatever that looks like, but it's like setting the entire scene holistically. How would you say for anyone who has been kind of out there in podcasting and telling their story, what are some different ways outside of that, outside of the love languages that we can think of or the stage languages. Sorry. That we can really help our stories to land.

You know, the big thing I see missing so often with storytelling is, is it's well intentioned. This advice that we've gotten in the past of like show, don't tell. You've probably heard that before. Like, ah, storytelling is about show, don't tell. Yes. Kind of what that has caused a lot of people to do is to. To get very descriptive about the room they were in, about the outfit someone was wearing. And that doesn't have any emotional truth to it. It's just describing a room. Right. So if I was to say, oh, I walked into my interview with Lori harder and it was a gorgeous room. There was a tree and there was another tree and it had bookshelves and a glorious couch and comfy chairs. All it's doing is making the listener fatigue a little bit of trying to put together the room. It's making them imagine your room, which is not really that important if we're storytelling on stage or on a podcast. We're trying to get them to imagine a situation similar to what I'm going through. So let's say that I was describing walking into a room with you. Right. I could say, oh, my friend Lori, she is one of those people, she's tall, she is blonde, she Has a great smile, and she's beautiful. She always has great outfits on. So this audience is now thinking, let me. Okay, what does she look like? Let me imagine. Because they don't see you. I'm creating that. But none of that is emotionally what I want them to understand about you versus this is, I think, so much more powerful. I remember walking the room with my friend Lori. She's one of those people that when you walk into a room with her, you immediately feel invisible because everyone's eyes are on her. She has that kind of energy that glows where you say, hi, I'm here, too. But also, you kind of don't want to even be seen because she's so dynamic and engaging that being around her makes you feel that better. That's much more. The audience can replicate that. They can think of their person like that versus, like, why am I telling them about the room? Why am I telling them about what my friend looks like? Well, I'm trying to help them understand something. So why don't I just go direct there and tell them emotionally what I'm trying to get them to say? So that's number one. Number two. And that number one comes from Show Don't Tell. We go into this, like, creative writing college course of, like, the room was white. It was the kind of white of an eggshell grown on a main farm in the summer. It's too much description. What we want is emotional truth so we can understand what you were thinking. The other thing, for probably 98% of stories that come across my desk, they start way too early. They're starting way like, you know, this comes from the bad advice of stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I think so does a bagel. But like, everything technically, if. If someone leaves a room, there was a beginning, middle, like, everything is like, how is that helpful?

I will always take someone's second half of the bagel, though. Like, I'm not going to turn it down.

I love a bagel. Are you a cream cheese girl?

What are you doing? I'm all of it. Anything?

All of it.

Plain, cream cheese, everything. Bagels, whatever you want.

Okay, done.

Continue.

So we get to this place of, like, starting way too early in the story before something happens, versus if we can bring it closer to the moment when something happened. The audience is immediately like, whoa, where's this going? How is she going to get out of this? What's up? We can backfill. We can go back and explain. Oh, by the way, I'm standing at this drawer Pulling it out, because three months ago my mom said XYZ to me. We can go back and give them that dialogue, but we don't need to start at the beginning because what happens with that? The audience like, okay, okay, got it. Yep. You were a little. You did this. Okay.

You were four years old, then you were five, then you were six. Truly. It's like a time sequence.

Yeah. We start way too far versus, like, what is the first time that something happened. Let's see how far we can close. We can get to that. And then if we need. If we can tell the audience is confused because they need to know that I went to fourth grade in San Diego. Okay, cool. Let's find a way to fill that in. We can usually fill that in in flashback or something. So that's number two. And then number three is. Is not enough. Inner monologue. This is the last bit. When we're telling a story in a podcast or in a presentation, a speech, it's us telling it. We're the ones telling it. We want to know how you feel. How did you feel about that? So inner monologue is. What were you saying to yourself in that moment? So again, I walked into my friend's podcast studio and I thought, oh, my gosh, what a cool. Like, this is a big moment. Like, don't mess this up. Like, you've got this. She reached out her hand, she said hi. And I was like, hi. I feel so welcome. She's welcoming me. I feel good. Like, what were you thinking? That's gonna raise the stakes because it's gonna let us know. What were you hoping happened there? What was this about for you? What were you worried about? And these are the moments too. That, and you probably know from your writing and from this podcast as well, those are the moments people are gonna say, oh, my gosh, when you said that, how you felt about your friend. That is exactly how I feel all the time. Time. They're never going to say, oh, my God, that podcast room sounds amazing. What they're going to say is, oh, my God, I feel like that all the time when I visit my mother in law. Or those are the moments they can replicate. So inner monologue is, I think, storytelling magic that not enough people use of, like, I want to know what you were thinking. Walk me through Freeze. Do the Zack Morris, you know, like the clap, everything. And then break it down for us. Let us know. Know what was on your mind. What were you thinking about? What were you hoping happened? All of those things. Start to create a dopamine response where the audience is now, like, anticipating what's going to happen next. That is storytelling gold to have people saying, what is going to happen? What is. Is she going to get the. You know, she's so nervous about this. Is it going to work out? Is it not going to work out? That is from inner monologue. And I think more people should use.

I think that that goes back to the one of the first questions I had for you, which was the. How do you make, you know, when you're up on stage, how do you make people feel so connected? And I was just placing all the different times when I've, you know, or when I've heard you speak, I'm like, oh, he's sharing his inner monologue. And that's a universal feeling. Like, we've all felt that.

Yes.

And so it wasn't like, oh, yeah, I've been on that cruise ship before, or whatever the story was. It was, oh, I felt that before.

Yeah, yeah.

That is such a key takeaway for me of get them to say, oh, I've felt that. Not, oh, I've been in that place.

Right, yeah. It's also limiting if the only stories that are gonna resonate are the ones where someone else has been. Exactly where we've been done. But we can watch a movie about two witches, Wicked again, and we're connected to it. Why? Because it's all. It's not about two witches. It's about this one woman's journey, this other woman's journey, their inner monologue. It's about that. And so when we have stories to tell, we could do the same thing. It's not about the what happened, it's what it meant to you. And the what it meant to you means really, almost anything that happened to you. You can help the audience connect with you versus them. Just saying, oh, that exact thing that she's going through never happened to me. So I don't know what that's like. But if we can get to the emotional truth of it, the inner monologue of it, almost always someone will say, oh, I've never been in Minnesota, but I have been to a place that made me feel that way. So I'm with you. I got it. I can feel that that's gold. And that's what we're trying to do. Like, yeah, if you want to move people, that's what you got to do.

When did you know that this was for you? Like, doing this with people? Like, did you deny it at all, any part of you? Or like, wow, this Is what I do. This is what I do. Well, this is what I wanted do.

I think I've always been very interested in that element. We were talking about the beginning of like, people tapping into, like more of their own truth. I've always been really drawn to that of like, like, let them out, let them out. I want to see the real you. Like, even when I was a restaurant manager in my twenties, I just remember all the time thinking, I used to run this workshop when I worked at Potbelly Sandwich shop called yes, what's the story?

Yeah, you ran a workshop there called that, like just for your people, for like the managers.

Yeah, I was like a trainer. I was a corporate trainer.

Oh, amazing. Okay.

And so I got from manager to corporate trainer. And what it was about was for leaders to say, when you're giving someone feedback, when you're giving, it's not what happened in the moment, it's what are they going to leave and say when they go home and they tell their mom or their spouse, what's the story? They say, gosh, you know what? I messed up. And my boss called me on it, but he's got my back and I gotta figure this out. Or are they gonna say, this jerk is on me again, what's the story? Because now not every single person are we always gonna be able to like have a happy ending with.

Right.

But more times than not, we can, we can like incorporate that. So even back then in like my 20s, I was really interested in like how we show up to conversations, dictates how other people feel, what other people do, and the results we get. So I was always really interested in that. That. And I think it was really like 2016, 17, where I'd been doing speaking myself, and I was doing this like Taylor Swift year where I was going from like company culture speaker to I wanted to go storytelling. So I had a mid, like a popover, what is it called? A crossover album, where it was. My country pop album was culture into storytelling, was story culture. And it was about how company cultures are ultimately about the stories we tell and the stories your team tells. So that was my little like crossover moment.

Yeah.

And I started doing a lot of these improv based workshops with people. I was an improviser in Chicago doing sketch and improv comedy for a long time. So I started bringing in improv work into these like, I mean, like accountants at like a finance firm. Oh, God. And they're doing how fun.

I wish I could have seen that.

It was really, it was really funny sometimes to See, like, the most, like, khaki blue, button up, like, having fun for the first time, like, realizing his voice could do something. It was really cool to see. And I did an event with the OC State Fair, like the big Orange County State Fair. And there was a bunch of their team, and it was like the. The year round team. And there were electricians and, you know, the people that keep the fairgrounds going, like mechanics and builders and stuff. And we're doing this improv based activity and they're connecting to stories. And this guy, this guy you would like if you saw him, Laura, you're like, that guy's not gonna divulge something and everyone's gonna cry. He talked about somehow in his little scene that he was making, he talked about how he had been sober for five years. And of course everyone's like, yep, we know. We're proud of you. But then he went into all the people in the room that had been there for him for that. Oh, the person who he called one time when he was slipping. And this room of, like, mostly dudes and, like, account like. Like plumbers for the fair, like, keeping the fair operating, are sobbing. And I thought, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do with my life.

Like, wow.

Helping people connect to their own truth so they can express it instead of holding it in. And he said, I've never said this to anybody before. That's how we started. And I thought, okay, well, what's this gonna be? And then sobbing. All of us sobbing.

Wow.

All of us sobbing. It was one of those times too, where I was like, we had two hours left, and I was like, can we just end? Because, like, it's not gonna get better than that. Like, that. Could we just wrap up? Cause that was the high note there. But for me, that was one of these moments where all along I was always interested in this. But that moment in 2017, I think it was, was where I said, oh, I have to double down on this. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Like, you have got to double down on helping people connect to their truth and express it. Because this is. I don't want anything else. I don't want the rest of it. That's to me, me what this is about.

Oh, it's so good.

Yeah.

Tell me a time where somebody, like, saw you and believed in you. Maybe in a moment where you didn't. It's like you knew you had it in you, but where somebody really just, like, saw you and it moved you and it made you Feel like you could do it.

When I was 14, I had moved from living with my mom to living with my grandma and feeling all the things you would feel with that. Like, you know, that doesn't. That doesn't happen because you're like, yay, everything's good. Like. And I was going to a new school in Santa Rosa in Sonoma county, and in my social studies class, there was, like, a teacher's aide named Mary. Mary Haller. Still remember her name. Mary Haller. And I was feeling so lost and unimportant and, like, a project, like, at 14, I was also dealing with, like. Like, starting to have the thoughts of, like, oh, like, I'm not interested in girls. Like, what's going on there? And what's that about? All the negative thoughts that I had about myself with that.

Yeah.

All the family stuff. And this teacher's aide, Mary, every day she would talk to me and ask me how things were going, ask me what I was interested in. And it wasn't like, therapizing me. She wasn't like, tell me what's happening. Let's cry over it. But it was, what are you interested in? What do you like to do? What kinds of things are you doing? Let's. Let's do the next thing. And she became this. I mean, she was. I don't. Now I look at her and I'm like, was she 60 or 40? I have no idea.

She could have been 25, probably younger than me.

Yeah. I was like, I have no idea. In my head, she was, like, older. Yeah. But I just remember feeling in that moment where I was so lost and feeling like I didn't belong anywhere, that this person who was an adult was interested in what I thought and what I wanted to create in the world and what I was interested in. And. Yeah. Mary Haller, did that open a lot.

For you after that? Like, did things. Did you feel like things shifted?

Yeah.

Like that you could be more you.

Yeah. And it gave me. It gave me space to say, oh, there's room to explore all these things you're interested in. And there's this script that you feel like you've been given as, like, a poor kid who's not with your mom, you're not with your dad. Like this, like, the statistics that you've been given of, like, this is the way this life goes for you. You don't have to pay attention to them. You can go do other. You can go make up stuff here. And so for me, that's what it really did, was like, oh, wait, all of this is true. These statistics are true. It is true that I don't live with my mom. It is true that I don't live with my dad. All of these things are true. But is that the whole truth? And I can go and explore other ways of being, and I can decide to change my life, and I can decide not to go down the same path that other people in my situation have. And for me, that really was, you know, one, I think, in getting into the situation with my grandparents was really positive overall. But specifically that teacher's aide who probably. I bet. I don't even know if she's alive, but I'm going to look her up. Yeah, I've never talked about her before ever, so thank you for that. But it was really every single day her saying, oh, you're interesting and important to me.

Wow.

At a time when I didn't feel.

That way, being interested, like, just somebody being. Taking an actual interest in you without any, like, oh, I'm going to put you down this path, or I'm going to try to get you on this path. Like, hey, what are you interested in? That's really. That's so. It's like, not so beautiful.

Yeah. I saw Jesse Eisenberg, the writer, director, whose movie A Real Pain is nominated for a bunch of things. Kieran Culkin is in it. So if you've seen Karen Culkin on the awards circuit, that's for that movie. He talked about doing a movie when they were like teenagers with Emma Stone recently when he won an award and that her star really rose like, she's one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and his didn't as much, but he wrote all the time. And he would write on, you know, for McSweeney's and different places where people put creative writing out. And he said, never heard from anybody. His own mom even, except for Emma Stone. She would read his writing and say, this line was so funny. This bit that you said here, I love this. Wow. The way that you phrase this is so right on. So this movie that he is nominated for these awards for, she's a producer of.

Wow.

She. And he said this recently in an awards thing of, like, she was the person who encouraged me to keep doing this. Like, she was like a godmother of sorts. And for me, it's like the same thing that. That Mary did for me of like. Like, you don't have to do any of this. You don't have to do all of it. You could do some of it, but like, it's all a choice. You can. You could explore all of these things. And I. I didn't have the dialogue in my own psyche to explore what was possible for me. And so that relationship with her allowed me to explore, like, oh, wait, there could be different versions of me here. Let me go see which version of me I like. And I don't think I would be here doing this with Lori harder if I hadn't met Mary Haller when I was 14 years old.

Oh, we. We love her.

We love Mary.

We need to. We need to tell her. This is so good. Okay, so the book, let's get back to it. Because I want people, you know, everything that you heard today and everything that he shared, like, you're gonna have tangible ways to go through it yourself. But why do we. Why do we really need to go through this? Like, what do you think this is gonna unlock for people?

You know, at the beginning of the book, I wrote this dedication to my daughter Viviana, and it's been really cool. Like, you never see people post dedications. I've seen so many people post the dedication of the book. I think it's like a daddy issue thing too. I wish my dad said this to me. But in there, the last line of that dedication is what I've realized is it's what I want for everyone in the book. And it says, don't quiet yourself down because other people are intimidated by your power. And I just think whatever world it is that you envision, whether it's your own world, the big world as a whole, your community, all of that starts with communicating. And all of that comes from not handing off your power in your voice, in your body, and with your story. And so for me, what I hope happens with Make a Scene is that people read it and realize, oh, all these things that I've been told about, whether I'm too much or too little, you're not enough. Like, all of those things are just someone's take based on whatever they got going on. And I actually have all of these choices available to me, and I can start to leverage them and use them to get what I want done in the world. And whether that's that you want to sell more programs, you want to, you know, help the turtles with the straws or whatever's going on with those. Whatever it is that you see, you just want to connect with the people in your community more. Whatever it is that you want.

Such a vivid, vivid picture of the journal with his straws.

I'm going to join the Turtle community, whatever it is that you want, whatever life you want, I really believe it's on the other side of how we communicate. You know, one of the things I've learned from you is how much of that is how we communicate to each other for ourselves. First, like what we say to our ourselves, what we say to our close personal partners starts there and then I would say with make a scene it's about and how does it spread out to the world once you've gotten clear on your self stories, how do you take those and make an impact in the world? I hope when people read it they say, oh, these are things I can do. I can go do all this.

Well, I feel absolutely like I can go and do all the things that you shared today. And you know, so I've gotten to work personally with you, but I know that all of that is in your book. So if you don't get to work personally with Mike, which is the ultimate goal, let me tell you, it's the ultimate goal. Try to get there. But I'm so grateful for you and I hope you guys all go out and grab the book because it's powerful and all the tools in there are exactly what you put three people through. So you're not gatekeeping any of the, any of the info to go in, be big and be the biggest version of yourself, which I think is the is one of the ultimate goals in life and that's like the ultimate freedom of expression. So thank you so much for coming on the show and you guys, I'm going to drop in show notes where you can grab the book, where you can follow Mike and until next time, earn your happy. Bye everyone.